Saturday, June 20, 2015

Tradition

Rodeo season, it is here in Utah! Oh, we love a good rodeo. When we moved to West Jordan, 9ish years ago, we started something. We started going to the rodeo. Some would say it was to celebrate the 4th of July. But oh, there is something bigger behind it all. Caleb's birthday. Falls right in that perfect, fun time of year. Rodeos, fireworks, parades, sun and fun. The rodeo is to be together, to cheer and get excited and have fun. It is also for Caleb, our awesome boy who was born at this fun time of year. And so the tradition continues. We go to the rodeo, for his birthday.

We went to Strawberry Days again, in Pleasant Grove. It is such a fun rodeo! Not too far, tons of fun action.

Yes, they have mutton busting. Always fun to watch. But at the Strawberry Days Rodeo they do something called the "cash cow." You can see my three awesome the-die boys running out there to take their place.

And here you can see the hundreds of kids running around the arena. What are they doing? Something totally cool! The rodeo people tape real money to young cows (approximately 3-4 cows), hence the term "cash cow". They tell all these rowdy kids to come onto the arena floor and gear up as they release the "cash cows" from the shoots and the kids run around like crazy trying to yank the money off of the cow. So much fun to watch! They do warn the older kids to watch out of for young ones and the young ones to watch out for each other. We are not trying to teach stampedes or anything. Just some good, clean, crazy fun.

Other awesome moments in the rodeo not pictured. Rob's favorite, the wild cow milking event. Several milk producing cows are put in the shoots with rather long ropes tied around their necks. Enough companionships of brave men are then led onto the arena floor. The cows are released from the shoots and the object of the game is for these companionships of men to grab onto one of those ropes and get control of the cow long enough to get an amount of milk out of her. The wildness ensued when these men were dragged along the arena floor trying to get a hold of these cows and be the first. Hilarious!

Diedre's favorite is the barrel racing. I love to watch those beautiful, fast horses. The boys just love the excitement and Haley really got into cheering. So much fun!

But was it over? Oh no! Even though it was so incredibly late they had one more event. BMX style motorcycles. Our camera takes awful night shots. But here they are setting up the ramps for one dirt bike and one 4 wheeler to go around and around the arena, jumping into the air and doing tricks for all of us to eat up and love! The highlight? When the motorcycle did his flip!!!! The tradition continues and it was super fun! Love our little family and all those crazy, fun moments.